Overviews of the Collections

The Russian Collections at the Library of Congress

Harold M. LeichRussian Area Specialist

General Characteristics and Development

The Library of Congress currently holds about 700,000 physical
volumes (books, sets, continuations, and bound periodicals) in
Russian, and approximately the same number of volumes in other
languages of the former USSR and volumes in Western languages about
Russia and the former Soviet Union. There are also significant
collections of other non-book print materials (music scores, newspapers,
microforms and cartographic materials) and non-print materials
(sound recordings, motion pictures, manuscripts, photographs, and
posters), although statistics on these categories of holdings are
less readily available.

LC's Russian collection is by far the largest and most comprehensive
outside Russia itself, even though by policy current collecting
over the past fifty years was and remains highly selective, designed
to bring in only the most useful and scholarly publications from
and about Russia. Moreover, because of decades of communist censorship,
political manipulation, appallingly poor storage conditions, and
neglect of libraries in Russia, and because of LC's automation
and preservation programs and the number of staff members involved
in building, servicing, and interpreting the Russian collections,
it is highly likely that the Library of Congress is the best single
repository on earth in which to conduct research on Russia using
published sources.

Due to the existence of separate American national libraries
for agriculture and medicine, the Library of Congress does not
collect in the fields of clinical medicine or technical agriculture
(LC does, however, collect Russian materials on the history, philosophy,
economics, and social aspects of agriculture and medicine).

Categories
of print materials collected on a very limited basis or not at
all include: textbooks at any educational level; children's literature;
translations into languages other than English; offprints, preprints,
pamphlets and ephemeral materials; reprints and unrevised subsequent
editions; or popular or propagandistic literature (except as needed
for reference purposes or scholarly research). While the Library
collects very comprehensively in literary history, criticism, and
biography, belles lettres are traditionally acquired very selectively.
As a general rule, the Russian print collections are strongest
in the humanities and social sciences, with special and deliberate
strengths in language, literature, history, geography, political
science, the arts, and economics. Reference materials in all subjects,
but particularly those in the social sciences and humanities, are
collected as comprehensively as possible.

In addition to materials published in Russia and the former Soviet
Union, the LC collections are very strong in emigre Russian language
publications (produced in the major publishing centers of Western
Europe, North America, and Israel by the several waves of emigration
from Russia) and in English- and other Western-language materials
about Russia, much of it received on a comprehensive basis for
the past 120 years as a result of American copyright deposit laws
or extensive blanket orders and approval plans for the Western
European countries. The print collections in the hard sciences
and technology are much more selective and designed to represent
the best of scientific scholarship as published in the monographic
and serial literature. The non-print collections (and particularly
collections of unique, as opposed to mass-produced, items) are,
in contrast to the print collections, highly focused and very selective.
Manuscripts and archival materials in Russian or relating to Russia,
for example, are accepted by the Library only if they have a strong
American connection. There are major and often unique collections
of Soviet- era posters, prerevolutionary sound recordings, silent
motion pictures, news documentaries from the late 1980s, and early
20th century color photographs -- but in general Russian materials
are not the high points of the audio-visual collections, nor have
Russian materials in these media traditionally been collected at
the comprehensive, across-the-board level of intensity that is
typical for American materials.

The major impetus for the development of a major Russian collection
at the Library of Congress was the purchase in 1906 of the Yudin
Collection, a private collection of almost 100,000 volumes
assembled over a long lifetime by Gennadii Vasil'evich Yudin of
Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, and at that time the largest private library
in Russia. When attempts to sell his library within the Russian
Empire failed, Yudin sold his collection to the Library of Congress,
where it formed the core of the current Russian collection. Subsequent
systematic collecting of current Russian print materials since
then, particularly comprehensive since the Cold War years beginning
in the 1950s, have in a sense updated and filled in Yudin's collection.

At the present time, the Library maintains scores of acquisitions
arrangements for current and retrospective collection-building,
including materials exchanges with Russian libraries; approval
plans, blanket orders, and firm orders with book dealers; periodical
subscriptions; receipt of materials on copyright deposit and as
gifts from institutions and individuals; and an acquisitions operation
in downtown Moscow designed to "fill in the cracks" of the other
acquisitions methods.

Because of the large size of the Russian collections at the Library
of Congress, no comprehensive or detailed narrative survey or evaluation
of these holdings has ever been produced. Individual items are
of course listed in the Library's extensive published book catalogs
(National Union Catalog; Slavic Cyrillic Union Catalog;
et al.), available at major libraries worldwide; and via the computerized
bibliographic networks, databases, and utilities (OCLC, RLIN, WLN,
UTLAS, et al.), likewise accessible at the world's principal libraries
and research centers. The best single published guide to the Library's
Russian holdings issued to date is the Wilson Center's Scholars'
Guide to Washington, D.C. for Russian, Central Eurasian, and Baltic
Studies (3d. ed. Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1994).
There are published (and often quite detailed) catalogs for several
of the Library's special Russian collections, for example the 18th
century imprints; Soviet-era periodicals and other serials; the
Soviet Independent Press Collection; and the Prokudin-Gorskii Photograph
Collection.

Survey of Print Materials by Custodial Unit

The General Collections

"General Collections" is the term used at the Library of Congress for the "main
stacks," housed in the Jefferson and Adams Buildings. The General Collections,
under the custody and care of the Collections Management Division, contain by
default all post-1800 books and serials (including bound journals and periodicals,
but excluding bound newspapers) not in the custody of another division or unit
of the Library. Materials are shelved alpha-numerically by LC call number in
one overall sequence, A through Z, and there are no separate or special collections,
even for special "named" collections such as the Yudin Collection. Because the
Library receives many important reference and other works in multiple copies,
very often the general collections will contain copies of materials duplicating
the holdings of other divisions and reading rooms.

The General Collections contain over ninety percent of the Russian
book collections at the Library, including a large majority of
the volumes from the Yudin Collection. Because of the comprehensiveness
of the Library's acquisitions programs (given the limitations and
exclusions listed above), the General Collections represent an
unusually complete and comprehensive resource for reference and
research about Russia. Particularly noteworthy are the complete
(or virtually complete) runs of serials, from the early 19th century
through the present day, including all the major scholarly society
and university "transaction" series, source publication, and literary
series. Because the Library has maintained materials exchanges
with all the major Russian and Soviet academies of sciences and
universities, academic and scholarly publications are well represented
in the collections and may well be virtually complete.

European Division

The European Division maintains custody over a relatively small quantity
of material that is nonetheless of critical importance for Russian
research. In addition to current (past 2 years) newspapers and periodicals
in Russian, the division houses the Independent Soviet Press Collection
of over 3,000 independent newspapers and serials from the perestroika/glasnost'
period, 1987-1992. The division's reference collection for Russia
contains both the "old standards" (encyclopedias, dictionaries, biographical
sources, national bibliographies, subject and personal bibliographies,
and general surveys) and new reference books on non-traditional topics
such as joint ventures, military conversion, the development of parliamentary
democracy in Russia, and other topics of very current interest. One
of the most noteworthy collections is the Revelations from the Russian
Archives exhibit documents, a collection in photocopy of approximately
600 archival documents from the KGB, Communist Party, Central Committee,
Presidential, Kremlin, Foreign Ministry, and other formerly secret
Soviet archives. The items, the first ever to be released from the
formerly secret archives, were on display at the Library during the
Bush-Yeltsin summit in June 1992, and the European Division maintains
service copies of all the textual documents included, plus a number
of additional Party Archive documents received from other sources
(for example, a rare first draft of the Supreme Soviet commission
investigating the August 1991 coup attempt). Finally, the division
maintains custody of a number of arrearages of interesting retrospective
materials (much of this material is now in the process of being cataloged
and microfilmed), including early Soviet (1917-1935) periodicals
and government serials; pamphlets (including approximately one thousand
published before 1865); and Soviet and emigre period monographs that
are not found at other American libraries.

Rare Book and Special Collections Division

The division has a number of Russian treasures, including all the
Library's pre-1800 Russian imprints and approximately 4,000 volumes
from the Yudin Collection (i.e. all those volumes considered exceptionally
rare and/or needing special protection). The first "Russian" books
are in the collections -- Ivan Fedorov's Apostol (1564) and
his complete ("Ostrog") Bible of 1580. The collection of 18th century
Russian imprints, most of them received with the purchase of the
Yudin Collection, is particularly strong and noteworthy and is by
far the largest such collection outside Russia. The Division also
maintains Yudin's original handwritten card catalog for his own collection,
sold to the Library in 1906.

The Imperial Palaces Collection, purchased by the Library in
several lots in the late 1920s and early 1930s, consists of many
thousands of volumes presented to the families of tsars Alexander
III and Nicholas II and formerly kept in libraries of the palaces
in St. Petersburg and environs. Many of the volumes bear the bookplates
and inscriptions of members of the family of Nicholas II. The books
were sold by the Soviet government to raise hard currency for industrialization.

Serials and Government Publications Division

This division maintains current issues of Western-language newspapers
and journals. It also houses the back runs on microfilm of all newspapers,
including those in Russian and from Russia. The division has thus
over two hundred major runs in microform of Russian-language newspapers.
While the Library prefers to convert newsprint to microfilm for preservation
purposes, in a few exceptional cases the original newsprint issues
are preserved. A number of such, in large bound volumes, are in the
custody of the division. A particularly interesting treasure of the
division are the 1917-1920 issues of the papers Pravda and Izvestiia,
which have just recently been restored by the Conservation Department.

Music Division

The Music Division houses three categories of Russian materials:
books and journals about music (the musicology collection); music
scores and other printed music; and Russian musical manuscripts
and manuscript collections. All books on Russian music history,
criticism, and biography (the "M" class) are housed in the Music
Division, as are musical scores, holdings of which are especially
comprehensive and represent all major, and many lesser-known, Russian
composers for both pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods. The real
treasures of the Music Division are its archival collections, the
most prominent of which are the Rachmaninoff Archives (searchable pdf; 37.5 KB), the Serge
Koussevitzky Music Collection, the Diaghilev & Lifar Collection,
the Lopatnikov Collection, and a number of others. These collections
contain manuscript scores, notes, diaries, as well as some photographs
and published materials. A number of these manuscript collections
have been acquired in the past ten years or so and are currently
being processed. In addition to the archival collections of a number
of prominent and important Russian composers, the division holds
a small number of interesting medieval Old Believer musical and
liturgical manuscripts (irmologia, oktoikhi, etc.).

Law Library

The Law Library houses strong collections of Russian law materials
from both the prerevolutionary and Soviet periods. All legal materials
and items about law are by default under the custody of the Law Library
(including all "K" class items). The collections emphasize primary
published sources such as constitutions, individual laws, collections
of laws, promulgations, regulations, and directives, such as the Polnoe
sobranie zakonov (for the prerevolutionary period) and the Svod
zakonov SSSR (Soviet period). Historical and critical works on law
and legal history and systems are also collected. Relevant materials
from the Yudin and Imperial Palaces Collections are in the custody
of the Law Library. A number of other rarities in the Library's Rare
Book Collection include all pre-1800 imprints, for example the 1649
edition (emended in manuscript by its first owner to reflect later
changes) of tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich's Ulozhenie, the first
Russian published law code; and a copy of the rare 1651 edition of
Patriarch Nikon's Kormchaia kniga, a compilation of Orthodox
doctrines and practices that was instrumental in the Old Believer
schism in the Russian Orthodox Church. The only significant collection
of manuscript materials in the Law Library is a collection of 17th
century gramoty or legal charters.

Science and Technology Division

This division houses primarily reference materials, the bulk of scientific
and technical books and journals being in the General Collections
(the "main stacks" of the Library of Congress). The division has
custody of a comprehensive collection of Soviet standards (GOSTy)
and patents. A number of ephemeral materials, primarily pre-prints,
offprints, and reprints, from the 1960s through the early 1990s,
are also maintained.

African & Middle Eastern Division

The Division maintains custody of materials in, among others, the
Turkic and Finno-Ugrian languages of the Russian Federation, for
example Tatar, Bashkir, Yakut, Mari, and Udmurt. The Division collects
only print materials (books, journals, and newspapers). The major
holdings are in the languages of the Transcaucasian and Central Asian
republics of the former Soviet Union (Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Tajik,
et al.). There are interesting and very rare books, journals, and
pamphlets from the early Soviet period when these languages were
written in the Arabic or Roman scripts. In addition, the Division's
rare book collection contains several early 19th century Islamic
items published in Kazan', which of course remains a major center
of publishing in both Russian and Tatar.

Survey of Microform Materials:

Microform Reading Room

The Microform Reading Room has many thousands of volume equivalents
of Russian print materials (books and journals). Many of these are
the result of LC's own preservation programs, whereby deteriorating
materials from the General Collections or other custodial units are
microfilmed to preserve the contents. A number of long and complete
runs of serials have been preserved in this fashion (e.g. the important
historical journal Istoricheskii viestnik).

The reading room houses an excellent collection of the most important
commercially-published microform projects and sets, such as the
Inter-Documentation Company's microfiches of the Russian holdings
(primarily serials) at the Helsinki University Library; the Russian
History and Culture series issued by University Microfilms;
and the Russian Revolutionary Literature series published by Research Publications, Inc.

Current newspapers on microfilm are housed in the Serial and
Government Publication Division (see above).

Manuscript Division

By policy, the Manuscript Division collects only materials related
to the United States and to American political, cultural, and social
events, movements, and personalities. That said, there are significant
Russian-related holdings in the division's custody, primarily due
to the large number of prominent American statesmen and cultural
figures who have had Russian contacts.

The largest Russian collection in the division is the Alaskan
Church Archive, containing the records of the Alaskan Diocese of
the Russian Orthodox Church from the 18th century through the 1940s.
Given the significant number of American political and governmental
figures active in relations with Russia, there are numerous collections
with unique materials on Russia (e.g., the collections of Joseph
Davies, Henry Morgenthau, and Averell Harriman). Collections of
Russians' papers are less well represented in the division's holdings
but include the papers of Vladimir Nabokov, the archive of the
Pushkin Society of America, and the correspondence to the editor
of the emigre journal Vozdushnye puti.

Because of the existence for many years of the Foreign Archive
Copying Program, many documents relating to America and the United
States have been copied (either by hand or photographically) from
foreign originals and placed in the Manuscript Division. From Russian
repositories there are copies of relevant documents from the Foreign
Ministry, the Ministry of Justice, the Navy, the Russian-American
Company, and the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg. Contrary
to some published reports, the large quantity of manuscripts and
archival materials in the Yudin Collection remained in Russia at
the time Yudin sold his library to LC (the exact fate of much of
this material during the Soviet era, incidentally, remains a mystery).
The Manuscript Division does, however, maintain a collection relating
to the purchase of the Yudin Collection in 1906 including interesting
documents from the pre-purchase negotiations between the Library
and Yudin and internal LC memos on the pros and cons of the purchase.

There are also manuscript and archival materials in the Law Library
and the Music Division. Please see the relevant descriptions above.

Survey of Cartographic Materials:

Geography and Map Division

The Geography and Map Division maintains custody of atlases and sheet
maps, and houses the largest collection of maps in the world. Particularly
for the Soviet period, the division's collections are very comprehensive
in topographic, geological, and topical maps of the former Soviet
Union (most of them published by the Soviet cartographic agency,
GUGK). The division maintains custody of the substantial number of
prerevolutionary maps that were acquired in 1906 with the purchase
of the Yudin Collection.

Because of the strength of the division's holdings in medieval
and early modern Western European maps and atlases ("ptolemys," "portolans," et
al.), both manuscript and published, researchers have access to
early Western views of Russia.

Survey of Audio-Visual Materials:

Prints and Photographs Division

The Division maintains custody of individual still photographs and
photograph collections; posters (whether mass-produced or original);
and fine prints. Russian materials are heavily represented in the
first two categories. The major photographic collection, with about
2,700 items, is that of Sergei Prokudin- Gorskii, containing some
of the first color photographs ever made. The photographs are of
Prokudin-Gorskii's travels around the Russian Empire in the 1910-1915
period (some of these travels were at the behest of the tsar), and
include spectacular shots of rural Russia and Central Asia, and of
a number of churches and monasteries destroyed during the Soviet
era. The stereograph collection of black and white stills, dating
to the turn of the 20th century and received on copyright deposit,
has numerous shots of Russian cities and towns -- many of the shots
now noteworthy because of the wholesale destruction of churches and
monasteries in the Soviet period. The division also maintains a "geographic" collection
of individual photographs (of varying provenance) documenting specific
localities in Russia and Russian America.

The division's collection of published Russian posters is overall
very strong and best for the periods 1917-1923, 1941-1945, and
after 1980. Special purchases and the further development of exchange
relations with Russian libraries has greatly enhanced the poster
collections during the late 1980s and early 1990s. A special purchase
in 1992 was the Dzhangir Agaev collection of street poster art,
numbering about 500 items. Agaev has been for a number of years
the premiere political cartoon artist in Russia, and the collection
purchased by LC comprises the posters he drew to document the rapidly-changing
political and social scene in the perestroika period of the late
1980s and early 1990s. The posters acquired by LC are the actual
ones that were displayed in cases on Moscow streets during meetings
of the Supreme Soviet and Congress of Peoples' Deputies.

Motion Picture, Broadcast, and Recorded Sound Division

The division has custody of motion pictures; sound recordings; and
videos of television broadcasts. Russian materials are well represented
in all three categories of materials. For motion pictures, the division
has recently acquired a comprehensive collection of pre-revolutionary
Russian silent films, complementing the division's existing collection
of early Soviet films.

In the area of broadcast materials, the division's systematic
holdings begin in the mid-1970s and include videotapes of television
news and documentaries. Two principle sources are used for this
collection, which is still being actively built up: the Foreign
Broadcast Information Service's video footage of Russian television
broadcasts; and the U.S. Naval Academy's tapes of Russian television,
including not only news broadcasts but feature documentaries and
selected regular and special programs.

Sound recordings, primarily of music, are collected comprehensively;
the period best covered is that following World War II. This collection
of course includes not just Russian music but Russian (or Soviet)
recordings of all the musical classics. Particularly noteworthy
for the prerevolutionary period is the recently-acquired Berger
Collection of Russian sound recordings, a large collection on 78
rpm disc of Russian and other music recorded in the 1900-1913 period
in St. Petersburg.